street-view posts

Artist creates Google Street View inspired paintings

by Brad Linder Sep 21st 2009

Google Street View makes it easy for people looking for directions to find identifiable landmarks using Google Maps. It also lets you take a virtual walk or drive across any part of the globe that Google has photographed. And plenty of web sites have already popped up that are dedicated to showing interesting, unusual, or funny photographs captured by Google. One artist in Kentucky has found another way to use the service. He paints scenes found on the web using Google Street View.

Bill Guffey has about 3 dozen oil paintings in his Street View series online, although it sounds like has painted even more. Some depict rural scenes, while others capture a moment in time in an urban environment. There are pictures from Amsterdam, London, and New York. But Guffey says he hasn't actually visited most pf the places he's painted.

[via Neatorama]

Tags: art, bill-guffey, google-street-view, paintings, street-view

Filed under: Utilities, Web services, Google

Google Street View gets improved navigation controls

by Jay Hathaway Jun 5th 2009

Google Street View is an amazing tool, and it's fun to use it to take virtual walks around the world's cities, but it's not exactly known for its navigation interface. Fortunately, Google has introduced an entirely revised "pancake" navigation system that relies more on dragging and less on dozens of frustrating clicks just to walk down a street. Now, if you can see where you want to go, you can place the pancake there and jump straight away -- no arrow keys necessary!

Zooming behavior is improved, too. Any time you see magnifying glass inside the pancake, you can click to zoom in on that spot. This even works with individual buildings, allowing you to zoom in for more details than before. Google claims that the new navigation gives Street View's flat images a more 3D feel, and I'm inclined to agree.

Tags: google, google-maps, maps, navigation, street-view

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters, web 2.0

Virtually vandalize San Francisco in Wild Style City - Time Waster

by Lee Mathews May 21st 2009

Yesterday you saw Ships on Download Squad. Today, we've got another reality-based Time Waster for you - and yes, it's just about as boring.

But once again, it's the concept behind Wild Style City and the potential of the technology that's so exciting. As you wander around the streets of San Francisco, you'll spot areas that can be tagged (the little blank white boxes). When you find a spot you like, bust out your paints and markers and get to work.

Make sure it's good, though, or some other hooligan can come by and paint a new layer. You can vote tags up or down and give the ultimate thumbs up by marking someone's work as bomb (by clicking the little bomb icon). Moving around is by clicking the directional arrows is a little time consuming. To quickly jump to a new spot, bring up the map and click another location.

As you can see, the rowdy DLS Crew has been hard at work already, tagging the russet-colored stucco over Dinora's Joyeria - who you can call, if you like. That's their actual phone number on the sign.

Let's see some tags - post your handiwork on Flickr and tag it with wildstylecity!

Tags: graffiti, street-view, web-game, wild-style-city

Filed under: Google, Web

Google Street view goes live in the UK

by Brad Linder Mar 19th 2009

Google has launched Street View in the UK. Street View lets Google Maps users see photographs of streetscapes photographed by Google vehicles. At launch, you can see imagery for 25 cities in the UK including London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Sheffield and Southampton.

Overall, Google Maps has pictures of more than 22,000 miles of streets in the UK.

When the service launched in the US, it raised some privacy concerns. The UK is already light years ahead of the US when it comes to government surveillance cameras. But the BBC reports that Google did take some steps to ensure privacy in the UK version, including blurring faces and automobile license plates.

Tags: google-maps, street-view, uk

Filed under: Internet, Google, Social Software, Web

Google adds user generated photos to Street View

by Brad Linder Feb 28th 2009

Google Street View user generated photos

Google Street View lets you see photographs of city streets and their surroundings taken by Google cameras attached to vehicles that have been driving along major city streets in the US and other countries including Japan, Australia, and Spain. And now you can also find photos taken by amateur photographers as well. In this case, that's a good thing, because the amateur photos are often higher quality and more interesting compositionally. That's what happens when a human being snaps a photo instead of letting a computer to it.

Google is using geotagged photos contributed through Panoramio. The company also makes some of these photos available in other applications like Google Earth.

If you're viewing a location in Street View that has user photos available, an icon will pop up in the upper right corner of your screen letting you know that user images are available. When you click, a series of photos that you can scroll through will pop up. Just click the button on the right, which should now be labeled Street View, to go back to the normal view.

[via WebWare]

Tags: panoramio, photos, street-view

Filed under: OS Updates, Apple, iPhone

iPhone 2.2 firmware is out, with Street View and podcasts

by Jay Hathaway Nov 21st 2008

iPhone and iPod Touch users can upgrade their software to version 2.2 today. The update, which weighs in at around 250 megs, adds some highly-anticipated features. The two biggest for me are Street View in the Maps app and the ability to download podcasts from the iTunes Store. There are some smaller tweaks that you might appreciate, as well: that bug that sometimes kept messages from downloading in Mail is fixed, and you can click the home button when you're on any page of the home screen to go back to the first page.

Street View on the iPhone is every bit as cool as it sounds. It looks good in landscape and is really smooth to control. I suspect it won't be long before we start seeing photos of people holding up iPhone street view pictures of the place they're standing. Less flashy, but just as useful, walking and transit directions are available in maps now, as well. If you're an iPod Touch user, you're unfortunately out of luck on Street View for now, so far it's iPhone only.

Downloading podcasts was at the top of my wishlist for the iPhone (although I know a lot of you have lists of your own). It's always frustrating to finish an episode of a good podcast while you're out walking or on a train, and then wait until you get home to hear the next one. Not a problem anymore, thanks to the latest iPhone update. All in all, 2.2 offers some excellent new features. The only thing I have to complain about is the new Safari layout, which feels cramped with the address bar and the search bar smooshed in next to one another.

Tags: Apple, Google-Maps, iPhone, iPhone-2.2, iphone-firmware, iphone-software-update, podcasts, street-view

Filed under: Internet, Features, Search

EveryScape beta launches: not quite a Google Street View Killer (yet)

by Brad Linder Oct 29th 2007

This summer we got our first look at EveryScape, a new startup that makes Google Street View look like child's play. But now that the company has launched a public beta, we have to say, we're not convinced Google has anything to worry about. Yet.

EveryScape certainly looks beautiful. 3D panoramas of real-life street views are stitched together from special photos taken atop EveryScape vehicles. Users can also submit their own photos to help flesh out details. At launch EveryScape has scenes from 4 cities: New York, Boston, Miami Beach, and Aspen.

You can click an Auto Drive button to take a guided tour of a city, or select "You Drive" to take control of the "wheel" yourself. There is also a nice directory of popular locations, including sightseeing spots, shopping, food and night life. In some locations, you can even click on an icon within the EveryScape interface to get a pop up button with more information.

But there's one big problem with EveryScape. It's slow. Really, really slow. Periodically during our test drive, a message would pop up telling us that the site was experiencing heavy traffic, which was affecting performance. So hopefully EveryScape is just experiencing growing pains. But while EveryScape provides much more detailed imagery and information than Google Street View (for selected locations), Google has a huge server farm which is capable of handling high traffic volumes.

Tags: 3D, everyscape, maps, street-view

Filed under: Internet, Google

Google adds Street Views for more cities

by Brad Linder Oct 9th 2007

Google is making it just a bit easier to stalk your friends and find pictures of yourself online. The company has expanded its Google Maps Street View feature to cover 6 new cities: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, and Tucson. No, we have no idea why they didn't just drop Tucson and Chicago and find two more cities starting with P, (Portland, Oregon, and Portland Maine anyone?)

The Tucson, Phoenix, and Chicago imagery is all in high resolution. Google has also enhanced the pan capabilities. You've always been able to look up, down, left and right in an image. But if you ever tried looking at the top of the Empire State Building, the image was cut off. Google has added the ability to pan up to the top of high buildings including the Sears Tower in Chicago. The top of the Empire State Building is still missing.

If you live in a major city that hasn't been added to Google's Street View yet, all we can say is keep an eye out for cars with cameras mounted to their roofs in the near future. And make sure you're not carrying anything embarrassing. And say cheese.

Tags: google, google-maps, street-view

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google

Google Moon gets updated imagery

by Brad Linder Sep 14th 2007

Google has added updates imagery to Google Moon allowing you to see high resolution photos of a place you're unlikely ever to visit. Aside from high res pictures, there are also photos, articles, scientific charts, and links to videos from the Apollo moon missions.

There are even Google Street View style 360 degree closeup images of selected locations, and a text search box for finding specific spots on the moon's surface.

Google's had the moon on the brain this week. The company has also announced its sponsoring the Lunar X-PRIZE contest. Teams around the world are competing for a $30 million prize. All they have to do is land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon. Of course, it costs NASA a whole lot more than $30 million to send the shuttle into space and back without even stopping at the moon. So the odds of anyone designing and flying a ship to the moon for less money than $30 million is pretty slim. But hey, the prize would help recoup some of your costs, right?

Tags: google-moon, moon, street-view, x-prize

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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